A man in Phoenix, Arizona has held weekly religious gatherings in his backyard with as many as forty people. The local government cited him for building and safety code violations that apply to churches. His appeals have been exhausted and he now faces sixty days in jail plus three years of probation. The man complains that the government is taking away his “freedom of religion.” Is it really? What would he say if a fire erupts near the backyard and not all of his congregation can get out of there in time? Read the full story here.

Is it freedom of religion or the freedom of association? Yeah I read the story and basically the neighbors complained for some reason and that's how the government got involved. He was being a nuisance and disrupting the neighborhood or something like that. Maybe God will help him out and send a lightning strike down on the pagan Non-believers...you never know...

Reply

Robert Chapman

7/9/2012 09:27:26 pm

How does one come to conduct religious services in his backyard?

Maybe he has accepted some new truth that appeals to others and has an engaging personality that draws people.

Maybe she has become a devotee of a foreign reeligion and shelters a monk at her house awhile, during which period they ring beslls, chant and have strange and numerous people coming and going at odd times.

Neither of these is unknown,but they present problems for thenegihbors.

Cars parked in street, people walking around in the neighborhood disturbing the dogs, and the general sense that the nature of the neighborhood has changed from single family residential to commercial.

The neighbors probably also feel that this change has taken place without the usual and cutomary warnings of erecting special purpose buildings, providing parking or any of the usual public permitting process.

Let's face it, once congregants begin congregating, religion bears many of the traits of a commercial enterprise. This is a development that utterly escaped the framers of the constitution, as commercialism did not exist in the 18th century when they wrote the US Constitution.

It is an enormous stretch by the first amendment advicates to assert that the commercial aspects of religion should not be regulated like any other commercial enterprise. If these regulations permit the prospering of Mammon, it is hard to conceive that such regulations would hurt God.